Hang up and drive: Ban on hand-held cell phones begins

Published 10:00 pm, Monday, June 30, 2008

Starting Tuesday, using a hand-held cell phone -- that is, holding a cell phone to your ear -- while driving may get you a $124 ticket.

There is no grace period. The Washington State Patrol isn't planning a "special emphasis" with the cell phone law as it did in May when the high-occupancy toll lanes were unveiled on the Valley Freeway.

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But there is a difference. While the other states allow an officer to ticket a motorist caught using a hand-held cell phone while driving, Washington's law makes it a secondary offense. This means an officer can't pull you over solely for that reason, but he can write you up if he stops you for another violation, such as speeding or running a red light.

Breaking the cell phone law won't be reported to your insurance company, Williams said. So drivers won't see their auto rates go up after getting such a ticket.

In Connecticut, where a similar law has been in place since 2005, motorists who are ticketed can buy a headset or a hands-free device and show the receipt to the court to get their $100 fees waived, according to a state police spokesman. Violators in Washington won't get such a break.

The first ticket is $124. Each ensuing ticket costs the same. And the law applies to drivers only, not passengers.

Even as retailers gear up to sell Bluetooth and other hands-free headsets, many safety advocates wonder if the law will change habits -- or make the roads any safer.

"Traffic laws that are secondary are much harder to enforce than a primary law," said Anne McCartt, senior vice president of research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. "A secondary law is comforting to the public because it makes people feel like something is being done, but a secondary law is not likely to change drivers' behavior."

The research indicates that using hands-free phones is always risky for drivers, she said. "It's still distracting to talk on a hands-free device."

The institute's own studies have shown mixed results. Four months after the District of Columbia required drivers to use hands-free devices, the rate of use dropped. While New York drivers' use of hand-held cell phones dipped immediately after the state's ban took effect in 2001, the rate returned to the previous level a year later. Meanwhile, cell phone use among teen drivers went up slightly after North Carolina banned its use among that age group.

No state completely bans all cell phone use. But many traffic safety experts wish drivers would hang it up.

"When you're driving you need to be driving," said Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste. "We'd prefer that drivers didn't talk on their cell phones at all. But if you must, please stay safe by using a headset or speaker phone."

The State Patrol said statistics on accidents involving cell phones are hard to come by because drivers involved in a collision must own up to yakking on the phone. In 2006, only 1,300 of the 210,000 drivers involved in collisions admitted they were talking on a phone at the time.

In the first five months since Washington's texting-while-driving law took effect Jan. 1, the State Patrol has stopped only 25 drivers and written 13 tickets.

New York officers wrote nearly 84,000 tickets in the first full year after its hands-free cell phone law took place and more than 1.4 million tickets since 2001, according to the New York Department of Motor Vehicles.

In 2007, state police in Connecticut stopped 7,748 people for driving while using a hand-held device and issued 6,252 tickets.

Harsha thinks the better alternative is this: "Don't talk on the phone while you're driving."

But it's just not your cell phone. She said drivers should manage other distractions by preprogramming their radios or laying out CDs they want to listen to before getting in the car.

"Driving is not an easy task," she said. "Even if you've been driving for a lot of years, it's easy to get distracted."